


The Great Day of Their Wrath Has Come

by vampinsecret



Series: Soulmates AU [2]
Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Because it's John, Confessions, Dom/sub Undertones, Drama, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self Harm, Implied/Referenced Sex Addiction, Implied/Referenced Torture, Incomplete Soul Bond, John is so sad, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, NSFW, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Obsession, Obsessive Behavior, Oral Sex, Romance, Sharky is a good friend, Smut, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, This is Far Cry 5 guys, Tiny bit of Angst, it's not sunshine and rainbows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:15:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampinsecret/pseuds/vampinsecret
Summary: ““Not this one.”John locked eyes with her once more as he handed his henchman the strange white Bible, before stepping forward into the shallow water to stand before her. Her ears rang a little from the adrenaline and the rush of the Bliss, but she shook it off just in time for John Seed to destroy her world.“This one’s not clean,” came out of her soulmate’s mouth, and her jaw dropped open in a gasp just before he roughly seized her soaked shoulders and shoved her back under the water.”
Relationships: Deputy | Judge/John Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/John Seed
Series: Soulmates AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931389
Comments: 25
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rook gets captured in Holland Valley after ages of tearing up Hope County, and John Seed shows her his displeasure.

Chapter 1

Rook couldn’t remember what she was expecting when she was first transferred as a fresh-faced junior deputy over to Ass-End-of-Nowhere, Montana, otherwise known as Hope County, but becoming a one-woman army in a war against cultists who committed crimes against humanity on an hourly basis was probably the furthest thing from her mind. She knew she was in for some kind of Twilight Zone-esque bullshit when she and her team flew past the mountaintop statue whose size could rival Lady Liberty, but a masterfully done lockdown of the county orchestrated by Hope County’s own heavily armed, waylaid residents, three sadistic lieutenants and a creepy shirtless leader carved with sins seemed almost too ridiculous to be real, if Rook thought about it too hard. 

In the weeks that followed the day of their failed arrest of Joseph Seed, Rook had been doing her damnedest to survive—and doing a surprisingly decent job at it, if she did say so herself. The first few days after leaving Dutch’s bunker were tense and downright scary. How the cultists (affectionately named ‘Peggies’) managed to seize control over the entire county so quickly, Rook will never know, but for those first few days it really felt like Rook was alone in a warzone, dumped right into enemy territory with all paths to safe harbor blocked by the promise of death. She stuck to the forests and bushes as much as she could, following the road and ducking out of sight whenever she heard voices, any voices. Friendly-sounding or not, the only way Rook could tell friend from foe was if the former was on their knees with the latter pointing a gun at their heads. With the exception of rescuing said innocent bystanders with a shitty, pilfered compound bow and freeing Dutch’s island at his behest (she did owe the man for the clothes… and not turning her into the cult) Rook focused her attention on keeping herself unseen and surviving through the nights. For the first time, she was grateful for the brief stint she did in the army, and mentally thanked her asshole of a father for pushing her so hard into it. 

Doing nothing but running for her life and scavenging for food and supplies got old quickly, especially as Rook caught glimpses of what these nutcases were doing every day—she’ll likely never forget that one crow-pecked corpse crucified in the middle of the I-40, completely skinned except for one large swath on his back so they could carve ‘SINNER’ like a fucking badge of honor—and God damn her if she wasn’t sworn to protect and serve. This would not stand, not while she was still breathing. 

Rook turned to answering the looping calls for help over the radio. Dutch had suggested the town of Fall’s End first, but Rook thought it best to gather some allies and better weapons than a shitty 1911, a bow and six measly arrows before charging an entire town. Rae Rae and anyone else at the pumpkin farm were already dead by the time she got there, but Rook found her first ally in man’s best friend, a scruffy champion dog with a useful penchant for alerting her of Peggie presence. She also became fast friends with the cousins Sharky and Hurk, who besides being hilarious company were the textbook definition of ‘hick’ with the added benefit of knowing their way around explosives. Rook learned pretty quickly they did not belong on stealth missions—Sharky had a tendency to hum the _Mission: Impossible_ theme song to himself no matter how many times she scolded him for it, and Hurk once accidentally blew up the truck they were sneaking towards with a poorly aimed shot from his RAT4, alerting every Peggie in a five mile radius—but they were fantastic for blowing up shrines and silos and those creepy beacons that played dying animal noises on loop. 

She also somehow ended up with both a cougar and a bear, because God apparently thought she might want to start a zoo when this was all over. 

She knew her main goal, eventually, would be to rescue her team from the cult’s clutches. There was no word on Earl or the Marshal yet, but Joey had been sent up to Holland Valley and Staci to the Whitetail Mountains, and she’d be of no use to any of them with shitty guns and no organized allies backing her up. Rook’s tactic was to cause a little bit of chaos, rescue some people and then flit out of the region before she could catch the attention of the Seed siblings, especially considering the horrendous shit she’s been hearing about them. Never mind Joseph and his weird, wide-eyed stare behind those tacky Ray-Bans—Jacob was supposedly brainwashing people and caging them like animals, and Faith was rumored to be something like a ghost, snatching people into ‘the Bliss’ and burrowing into people’s heads until reality was questionable… or until their brains melted and they turned into those disco-hating zombies she’d helped Sharky set on fire. 

But Rook was especially wary of John Seed, the smooth-talking lawyer who conned over half of Hope County into selling their businesses and homes to the cult, whose region seemed to have the greatest number of ‘SINNER’-carved bodies strung up like warning signs. Word about him was that he kidnapped people, skinned them alive as he forced them to ‘confess their sins’ and then locked them away in his personal doomsday bunker never to be seen again, if they weren’t killed outright for failing to ‘atone’. Rook recognized the kind of man who enjoyed causing pain better than he liked killing, and she wanted to steer clear of that as long as she could. 

That first day in the church John caught her eye, as he stood with his siblings behind Joseph like a threatening bodyguard, glaring at her with eyes so blue they pierced through the darkness. But she hadn’t thought much of him beyond that, too focused on escorting the madman to the chopper while angry cultists threw rocks at their heads. John Seed blended into the background, just another glaring face in a sea of dozens more. 

Yet the more she saw of him, the more there was something fascinating about the man… in a disturbing kind of way, like being unable to look away from a horrific car accident. Everything about him seemed like a multi-tiered juxtaposition—a rich lawyer tatted up to hell who wore designer clothes and styled his hair every day was the same person who crooned about love and the glory of God, while at the same time carving bloody sins into flesh and flaying it off when he pleased. The man looked like he should be a big shot in New York snorting cocaine off a fancy desk in a high-rise office, not in this backwater farm country packing silos full of explosives and preaching the fucked up word. 

Then there was that hilariously awkward infomercial about the power of ‘YES’ Dutch had shown her in the bunker, where John Seed smiled at the camera with a boyish face and crinkled eyes, too sweet and warm for someone so vicious. It was almost laughable, all uplifting music and happy touches like a life coach ad, all undermined by the unkempt outfits and the machine gun rounds strapped to their backs and Joey Hudson gagged and bound like a prop off to the side. Whatever amusement Rook was getting out of John’s cringey ad dissipated like smoke at the sight of her partner with mascara-dirtied tears streaking down her cheeks, and Rook made the woman a silent promise that she’d come get her soon, once she was a little better equipped. 

Eventually, Rook had had enough of hearing calls for help from Fall’s End and decided it was time to stop sneaking around and actually push back at the Peggies, instead of slowly chipping away at them. She took Boomer and the sniper champion she’d rescued from the church roof, Grace, and the three of them managed to take back the town so quickly it was almost unreal. Grace stationed herself on top the nearby water tower and picked off any Peggie who dared wander too far from his kin, while she and Boomer carefully lured stray cultists with well-thrown stones or quiet barks close enough that Rook could silently sink her knife into their throats, before taking the remaining few head-on with guns blazing, John’s voice preaching dramatically in the background. Their only hiccup was when the fuckers decided to call in a Chosen in a fighter plane, but some lucky shots from Grace and one absurdly well-timed throw of C4 on Rook’s part when the plane swooped at her head won the day. 

Mary May Fairgrave and the good Pastor Jerome made her realize she had made something of a name for herself, tearing through the county as she had been. ‘The Deputy’, she was called now, like an honored title. It caught her by surprise, having been basically on her own for most of the last few weeks. Apparently her attempts to stay under the radar weren’t working on the part of the brewing resistance movement, at least. 

And it was nice, at least at first, when the five of them (Grace and Boomer included, once they coaxed Grace out of scouting the roads for more Peggies) shared a beer and the first decent home-cooked meal Rook had had since this shit started that wasn’t just pilfered rations and unseasoned fish and game she managed to forage. Boomer happily chowed down on bits of meat Casey threw him from inside the kitchen, while Grace cleaned her gun and Rook talked to Mary May. 

“So, John Seed,” Rook had said seriously, once there was food in her stomach and the adrenaline from being shot at started to wear off. “Where exactly is he keeping my partner?” 

“He takes all of his hostages into the bunker to the west,” Mary May replied coolly, slamming the bottle down after taking a long swig. “You’ll have a fuck of a time gettin’ her out of there, Deputy. The whole place is guarded, and there’s a security gate near the main road about a mile down the mountain. The only way you’re gettin’ in is if you’re going in as a hostage, and that’s not the best idea right now.” 

“We’re going to have to weaken John’s hold over this region first,” said Pastor Jerome over his steak and fries, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Take his outposts, steal his prisoners, and kill as many goddamn Peggies as we can.” 

Rook raised her eyebrows at hearing a pastor encouraging murder, but said instead of commenting, “And get his attention in the process.” 

“You took back our town, honey,” Mary May said dryly, leaning over the counter on her elbows. “He’s been trying to grab it for weeks. Only just succeeded, finally. He wants this town, Dep, and you just took it from him. If he don’t already know you’re here, he’s gonna know now.” 

And she was right, as not even an hour later Rook was bunking down in Mary May’s spare room for the night when her radio crackled to life. 

“Brothers and sisters,” John’s voice declaimed like a sermon over the grainy speaker, so unexpectedly Rook almost jumped out of her skin. “Someone out there is not playing by the rules… Someone is taking from us, stealing what rightfully belongs to the Father… They are a murderer and a coward.” Rook snorted and picked up the radio, wondering if she should interrupt with some snark, but deciding against it—she’d already riled the psycho up enough for one night. “But God sees them… and God will guide us to them. They will be found, and they will be punished. This is the will of the Father.” 

Over the next few days of tooling around Holland Valley, Rook held her breath and waited for Johnny boy to send a cavalry for her, or at least for Fall’s End, but it never came. A proper resistance group gathered in Fall’s End once word spread that it had food, guns and more importantly freedom from the cult, but John didn’t seem to take the threat of her very seriously—something Rook desired to rectify. Grace managed to find her a decent sniper rifle with a silencer, which made taking outposts a lot easier and quicker than with her compound bow. She quickly mowed down the outposts nearest to Fall’s End, each time easily taking out four to five Peggies before anyone realized what was going on. 

Rook learned the hard way that her reputation preceded her elsewhere than with the Resistance. The second the Peggies at the Green-Busch fertilizer plant found the bodies, they slammed on the alarms shouting, “ _The Deputy is here_!” and “ _It’s the sinner_!” forcing Rook to flee before they spotted her. She spent the rest of the morning trapped on top of a billboard and watching through her rifle’s scope as backup arrived and the Peggies combed the woods in search of her, swearing and damning her to hell all the while. She picked off whoever wandered too close before sneaking up behind the last few and gunning them down with her battered AR-C (fucking Christ, she needed some better weapons). 

Rook made sure to shoot the alarms first, after that. 

As she waged her lone crusade, Rook answered some more calls and made friends with more Resistance members. God help her if her heart didn’t clench for the Ryes, out in the middle of nowhere with a baby on the way. They were sweet folks—Kim gave her clothes that didn’t hang off her like a parachute, warmly commenting to, “Keep ‘em. Fuck knows my ass isn’t gonna fit in ‘em anymore,” to which Nick called from the other room, “Your ass is the greatest thing on Earth, baby,” with absolutely zero shame. 

Everyone in Holland Valley knew the Ryes were fucking adorable. 

And John was apparently watching the whole while, as Rook took outpost after outpost, blew up all his silos, liberated people from his prisoner vans and stole Nick Rye’s plane right out of his personal hangar at that obnoxiously highbrow ranch of his, because it wasn’t long before he radioed her a second time. This time he sounded pissed. 

“ _Sin_ is pervasive,” the high-balling preacher snarled, yet still managed to somehow sound like he was giving a speech at the UN, the fancy asshole. “It drives us to do unspeakable acts. I know the feelings that drive you. I know them… intimately.” 

“Kinky,” Rook muttered to herself, only half-listening as she busied herself with looting one of the many prepper stashes littering the county, because apparently everyone here was a doomsday-loving nutcase, Peggie or not. 

“But I can help you, _Deputy_.” The title rolled off his tongue like a term of endearment, every syllable carefully drawn out. “I can wash away these sins. I can cleanse your soul. It will be difficult, and it will be painful, but… it will be worth it. My people will come for you. They will bring you to me. Don’t fight it. Because the harder you resist, well…” He chuckled, a dark, rumbling sound, “…the harder we’ll have to scrub your soul.” 

The radio clicked off. 

“Oh shit,” Rook groused, and bolted for the open hatch. 

A quick glance around yielded no sign of Peggies, just rustling, sun-browned grass swaying in the breeze and the buzz of a beehive forming on the side of a nearby house. Boomer was waiting like the good boy he was, laid down on the dirt biting absently at some long strands of grass. She exhaled a relieved sigh. If anyone were after her, Boomer would let her know. She’d just stick to the woods and the hills, just like before—it seemed to work well enough the first time. Just in case, she switched the frequency onto the one most used by the Peggies, hoping that would give her a fair bit of warning as to whereabouts they were looking for her. 

With a grunt, Rook hoisted herself up and snatched up her backpack, whistling to Boomer to get going. He hopped to attention at once, tail wagging and trotting in front of her like a furry bodyguard as she made her way through the woods. She didn’t think anything of the faraway rumble of planes flying overhead, until her radio hissed with the sound of an open link. 

“It’s deputy huntin’ season,” snickered one voice, before another responded sharply, “Capture, not kill. Hit her with the Bliss bullets.” 

The screech of tires on sun-heated pavement up the hill caused Rook to bolt at once, Boomer darting after her with an angry bark. Her thick boots skidded and twisted over the stony slope of the hill, her ankle twinging with every awkward landing, a grimace forming every time her supply-laden backpack banged against her back. She didn’t hear the telltale sound of booted Peggie footsteps following, and when she glanced behind her she saw nothing but the sun-brightened tree line and a startled pronghorn taking off into the bushes. She slowed, breathing heavily and blinking in awe at the decided lack of Peggie pursuits. 

“Are you fucking serious?” Rook panted, bending over to catch her breath and huffing out a disbelieving chuckle. 

Did she manage to evade them with a clumsy sprint that couldn’t have lasted longer than five minutes? Fuck, she’d kill to have Peggies this incompetent over in Jacob’s region—his Chosen were goddamn devils who could (and had) easily shoot her through the thigh from a mile away without ever alerting her of their presence. Johnny’s lackeys had a lot to learn. 

Her barely healed thigh throbbed at the memory, so she stopped meandering and started jogging, scowling at whatever jar in her pack was still bruising her back with every step. Boomer followed close by, scouting ahead and looking wary. Apparently he too couldn’t believe they’d gotten away that easily. 

“ _Where are you, sinner_?” bounced directionless through the trees, and Rook’s legs kicked right back into gear, darting behind shrubbery. 

“She can’t hide for long,” someone snarled over the radio. 

“Try me, bitch,” Rook muttered, scouting her options. 

There was a cement overpass arching over a stream branching off from the river that she could dart under, but it was less than ideal assuming the Peggies were still flooding the highway. She could keep following the tree line; she’d probably eventually get to an empty cabin, and—

The roars of dual engines and the crackle of tires skidding over twigs and bushes prompted Rook to nearly jump out of her boots. The fuckers were literally driving _into_ the woods! 

“There you are!” one of them snarled, already pointing a pistol at her. 

Boomer barked once, prepared to attack, but Rook grabbed him by the collar before he could dart into the fray and hurled herself back into the trees, hoping against hope the trunks would provide an adequate shield. She swore when she could hear the buzz of an ATV practically nipping at her heels, fumbling to try and unclip her handgun from the harness on her thigh mid-sprint. She cursed again when the snaps of the holster came undone, the handgun tumbling uselessly down the hill. Heart pounding, Rook did the first thing that came to mind—she grabbed a pack of C4, hurled it over her shoulder and pulled the trigger. 

Angry and pained shouts echoed through the woods once Rook’s ears stopped ringing, and she chanced a glance behind her to find the charred pieces of the vehicle’s frame and several bodies littering the leafy ground, a second vehicle already maneuvering around them to follow her. Its rider glared at her as he revved the engine, the passenger pointing a gun at her. At the last second Rook darted out of the way, the ground exploding behind her. 

She cursed and whistled for Boomer to split off, loath to risk him to the capture party. The dog whuffed but obliged, branching off from her and disappearing into the bushes, while she risked slowing herself down by reaching back to rummage for another explosive. She swore to herself when she found nothing, then again when another bullet collided with a tree trunk and burst in a shower of sawdust and bits of bark. 

In desperation, Rook darted up the hill towards the road, hoping beyond hope that there would be an idling vehicle for her to pilfer (it wouldn’t have been the first time) but she cried out as a sharp pain blossomed in her shoulder. Her booted foot stumbled against the rocky hillside as her world started to tilt, until it felt like she was running on a treadmill. Rook blinked as glitter exploded in her eyes, the ground splitting into two wobbly pictures, her bones suddenly feeling like they were made of lead. 

“…the fuck is this?” was her last word before the ground shot up to meet her face. 

***

“This one?” 

“No. This one.” 

The world was spinning, and Rook was cold. Her borrowed flannel clung wetly to her arms and torso, and she tried writhing away from the uncomfortable feeling, but didn’t have the energy to move more than an inch before flopping back down. 

She blinked up at the stars, both the ones that were stuck to the sky and the ones that lazily floated in and out of view, and frowned up at the scowling face that towered over her like a sentinel. 

“Don’t seem very worthy.” 

“It is not for us to judge.” 

Who wasn’t worthy? 

“Deliver them unto the waters,” said the second voice, now suddenly behind her, and she jumped a little. “The Cleansing begins tonight.” 

_Unto_? Who the fuck says _unto_ anymore? 

Somebody yanked on her arm, hard, and if Rook had the energy she would have protested. Her eyelids were heavy, so she let them close for just a second. When she opened them again, the world was right-side up again, except now she couldn’t breathe. Instinctively, she pressed her lips shut despite the burn in her lungs and whimpered, blinking up through the water at the shimmery face of an unknown Peggie, whose hands were clamped around her shoulders to keep her under. Through the dull ambience of the water and the rush of blood in her ears, Rook could hear someone talking, declaiming, with all the drama of a Shakespearean soliloquy.

“…We must expose our sins. We must _atone_!”

Her captor pulled her up way too quickly for her addled head, and she collapsed into him, spluttering and coughing. He righted her with a hand on her shoulder and a disapproving glare, before turning her attention to the mysterious voice with an outstretched hand as if to beckon, ‘come and see’. 

“For only then,” John Seed boomed, with a voice so powerful Rook wondered if it could knock down mountains, if he tried, “may we stand in the light of God…” 

She blinked the water from her eyes, cringing away from the bright lights that lit up the herald’s frame with a heavenly white glow. He read from an open Bible (or their weird Peggie equivalent, anyway) and held his hand out to gently touch the forehead of another figure, like he was anointing them, and it was then that Rook realized she wasn’t alone. Woozily, she chanced a glance around and was just able to make out several other blurry figures stumbling out of the water, all escorted by a Peggie with as firm a grip on their shoulders as Rook’s new friend had on hers. 

“…and walk through His Gate unto Eden,” he finished, closing the book with a snap as he turned towards her (again with the ‘unto’ shit). 

His head tilted slightly as she was led towards him, looking at her with a kind of inquisitiveness… except it turned her stomach in knots, like there was something quiet and dangerous underneath it. His lean figure wobbled in and out of focus, wisps of light still sparkling around his head, and if Rook stared long enough she could trick herself into thinking they were little fairies, glowing with magic and dancing around him. He stared at her with a gaze hard as stone, and Rook tried to stare back at him, but the hum of Bliss in her system weighed down her eyelids and drifted her focus. She was just able to make out the blurry motion of his arm darting out to stop her captor, eyes still locked on her. 

“Not this one,” he muttered to the Peggie holding onto her, whose grip disappeared abruptly. 

John locked eyes with her once more as he handed his henchman the strange white Bible, before stepping forward into the shallow water to stand before her. He looked at her as one might look at a wild creature, blank and calm in expression but poised to attack should she make a move. Was he afraid of her? If Rook wasn’t stoned out of her mind she might have smirked, but instead she just blinked back at him curiously. Up close, the strange, soft beauty of his face was almost awe-inspiring, high cheekbones sculpted above his well-kept beard, his sunglasses perched fashionably in his styled hair. Fucking Christ, Rook thought, why was this guy a weird preacher and not off modelling somewhere? His eyes were so blue even in the dark of the night; it was like drowning in the sky. Her ears rang a little from the adrenaline and the rush of the Bliss, but she shook it off just in time for John Seed to destroy her world. 

“ _This one’s not clean_ ,” came out of her soulmate’s mouth, and her jaw dropped open in a gasp just before he roughly seized her soaked shoulders and shoved her back under the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Johnny boi's turn! I binge wrote this since before I had even finished posting Joseph's, ~~because I am biased for sad baby blue preacher man~~ because John needs a lil extra love <3 Please excuse mistakes, there's only so many times I can reread the same fic and try to make it perfect before my eyeballs threaten to fall out.
> 
> It's not at all necessary to have read Joseph's story before this, but they are connected in tiny ways, like little alternate timeline Easter eggs (๏ᆺ๏υ) I hope some of you catch them!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rook processes the realization that John Seed is her soulmate (with the help of whiskey and rockets).

Chapter 2

Her soul mark never made sense to her before this moment, forced back under waters so frigid they froze her lungs solid, with a grip hard enough to hurt more than the burning in her chest.

 _This one’s not clean_. 

What a bizarre thing to say to your soulmate, Rook had always thought. For one, they addressed her like a characterless thing, picking her out of an ensemble of other characterless things. Not exactly the politest way to refer to someone who was supposed to be the love of your life. It looked almost hostile, but that didn’t make sense—soulmates weren’t supposed to hate each other. 

For another, what would they mean by her being ‘unclean’? Her kid self always imagined meeting her soulmate along one of those rivers that wound all around in little ropes behind her house, like the woods were playing cat’s cradle. She liked making mudpies best, slapping at them until they were round and flat like when Mama made hamburgers out of fresh ground beef. She’d come home covered in twigs and dried-on mud, the front of her shirt soaked with river water, and Mama would shake her head and tell her, “Such a dirty girl. Mark my words, peanut, you’re gonna meet your soulmate buried up to your chin in dirt.” 

_Mama wasn’t all that wrong_ , Rook thought for the split second she had enough mental capacity to form a thought, before her oxygen-starved brain riled her into a panic. Her gasp of shock at the sound of her mark spitting from the Baptist’s mouth had caused her to accidentally inhale icy water when he shoved her back under; it burned like hell going down and coming back up, the coughing forcing oxygen out of her lungs in giant bubbles until she had none left. She flailed her limbs, trying to break free of his unforgiving hold so she could get air again, but his already punishing grip tightened so hard she actually twisted herself deeper into the water for a moment, trying to get away from the pain. 

A stab of betrayal pierced through her the more he resisted her thrashing—her soulmate was trying to _drown_ her! She stared wide-eyed and terrified up at the dark outline of his rippling face through the water, looking for all the world like Death itself, featureless and made of shadow just barely gathered into the vague facsimile of a person. Panicking, she fought with all her might against him, against the instinctual aversion to hurting her soulmate, scratching and clawing at his silky sleeves in search of skin to break in spite of the obstacle of her gloves. She couldn’t help but shout in a burst of bubbles and muffled noise when one of his hands released her shoulders to violently grab her hand and shove it back down, his grip crushing her gloved fingers so hard she feared they might snap. Water shot up her nose when the urge to inhale overwhelmed her, and Rook didn’t have enough oxygen to force it back out. She opened her mouth in a silent scream as the pain of water trickling into her lungs became her entire world. 

Just as she felt her limbs losing the energy to keep fighting, John yanked her back up, stumbling slightly at his own violent gesture. Rook sucked in what tiny lungfuls of precious air she could around the water that was burning her chest, curling into John as she spluttered and coughed and heaved. 

“Ahh…” he tutted. “ _Shhh_.” 

His voice was soothing but his eyes were cold, looking down at her with an empty mockery of softness and compassion, an expression so complex Rook wondered if it took him years to master it. The Bliss sparkles around his head no longer made him seem magical and ephemeral; now they looked like the sparks of his wrath, ready to set the world on fire… or her lungs, at least. 

His face hardened again and his grip tightened, tensing in preparation to shove her back down. Rook panicked and immediately locked her knees so he’d have to fight to get her down, but he had a good fifty pounds on her and the advantage of not being high as hell and half-drowned, so it wasn’t much of a fight. As she tipped back towards the river, Rook sucked in another giant breath around the still-present urge to cough, prepared this time to last as long as she could so it would hurt less, but he froze in place like he had been turned to stone the moment someone’s voice cut through the heavy air. 

“Do you mock the Cleansing, John?” 

Every minute trace of anger, hatred and disgust dropped off his face so quickly that Rook would have missed it if she blinked. His eyes widened and his brows arched upward, and he stared at her—no, he stared _through_ her, not quite seeing her anymore, looking terrified, like the mysterious voice had been God’s own reaching down from heaven to chastise him. Maybe it _was_ God, Rook thought dreamily, before John’s grip on her shoulders slackened and he backed away from her as if burned. 

Rook squinted as John’s retreating profile caused the white lights to flood her vision, and when she blinked away the hurt she saw Joseph Seed instead of God, standing in a fancy black waistcoat (oh, so he did know what shirts were) on the sandy banks of the river. He looked towards John, his face shadowed, so Rook looked at John too and found him staring off to her left, nowhere near where Joseph was. She followed his gaze curiously, but there was nothing, and when she looked back she finally noticed that John looked… sad. 

More than sad. He looked _devastated_ … and a little bit frightened, still. Did he fear his brother? At the very least, John was visibly crushed by his disapproval. Rook’s mouth formed a silent ‘oh’, but before she could do something stupid, like try to speak, tell him it’d be all right, John spoke first, but not to her. 

“No, Joseph,” he said quietly, but there was a hitch in it, and Rook could easily picture this man as a little boy, turning towards the corner and hiding his face so nobody would see he was about to cry. 

Joseph spoke again, but Rook was captivated by the way John just bit his lip in response, still keeping his eyes locked shamefully to the side like the idea of facing his brother was an unholy, heinous prospect. She openly gawked at the heartbreaking picture he made, feeling her fingers twitch with the ridiculous urge to reach towards him, to smooth away the upward arch of his brows and cradle his face. Her throat still burned from the water she’d just hacked up though, so she was reminded about all the reasons why that was a terrible idea, but while her hands stayed put her eyes drank him in like she could will away his hurt with her gaze. 

She blinked, and suddenly he was gone, and she was zooming towards Joseph Seed and his outstretched hands so fast the dancing trees disappeared into a dark green blur. A gasp flew out of her mouth at the perceived speed, but she immediately regretted it when the fire in her throat made itself known again. Rook bent over to cough again, but was straightened by Joseph’s much gentler hold on her arms, the wet flannel squishing at the grip. 

“Despite all that you have done,” the preacher said softly to her, “you are not beyond salvation…”

He kept talking, but Rook only half-listened, trying to subtly crane her next to catch another glimpse of her sad soulmate. She started when she found John lingering just to her right, a step or two behind her. Her breath hitched at the absolutely wretched sight he made, shoulders hunched in like a chastened child as his brother reassured the ‘sinful’ Deputy where he scolded John. That was hardly fair. 

Joseph’s hand tightened around her upper arm for a moment, jolting Rook’s gaze back to him—it had wandered to John way farther than she had intended—and he stared down at her with his creepy, yellow-tinged gaze that radiated an intensity so strong, Rook felt like he was interrogating her soul. She wanted to squirm away, but didn’t dare move, in case he looked too closely and saw her secret. 

After fuck knows how long of the two of them staring at each other, Joseph turned to address his brother, placing a hand on John’s shoulder and bringing their foreheads together in a sweet, personal gesture of comfort… or so she thought, as the next words out of Joseph’s mouth was, “This one shall reach the atonement. Or the Gates of Eden will be shut to you, John.” 

John’s eyes squeezed shut like the words tore open a gaping hole in his chest, whispering, “Yes, Joseph.” 

Rook stared open mouthed and confused and desperately wanting to erase that soul-crushing expression, as Joseph caressed the back of his brother’s head like she wanted to do herself. Joseph walked off towards the light of the truck, John staring wistfully for a brief moment before he turned his attention back to her. 

Her breath froze like ice in her throat; his gaze cold and downright evil once more, and suddenly Rook remembered he had just tried to murder her. She tried stumbling back a step, but he caught her by the lapel of her shirt with a quick hand, and she bit back a horrified noise at how close his bare hand was to touching her skin. She knew what happened when two soulmates touched for the first time; she’d seen those late-night romances, read those shitty paperbacks… and he couldn’t, he _couldn’t_ , not after what he’d just done…

“…confess,” she realized he was speaking—hissing, really—through gritted teeth, and Rook snapped her gaze up from his hand to his eyes again, so pale in the moonlight they were almost clear. “Every sin you’ve ever committed, no matter how petty, no matter how small… I will pull from you.” She shivered, not just from the chill of the night on her drenched skin but at the horrifying picture that brought up, picturing him carving into her with a knife and digging his hands inside to yank her bloody sins right out of her mangled body. “Then we’ll see if you’re worthy of atonement.” 

His nose wrinkled in disgust, like he doubted her worth, and another absurd stab of betrayal had her hunching in a little bit involuntarily. His eyes briefly twitched away from her to the left, and Rook realized it was a signal when a bearded Peggie with a torn cardigan grabbed hold of her arms and shoved her over to the truck. He needn’t have bothered—Rook felt like her whole body was numbing the further she stumbled from her soulmate, every step away from him another veil of Bliss-haze being lifted. Where she had seen a crushed man in need of comfort before, she now realized was a hateful, vicious thing disguising itself in a pitiable form, who looked at her like she was wretched and spoke her mark the split second before attempting to murder her, ceasing only under the unspoken threat of punishment from a leader he and the other Peggies thought was the closest thing to God since fucking Jesus. 

Her raw throat closed and she squeezed her eyes shut. She was shoved into the back of a vehicle and allowed to bump and jerk around on the shitty wooden bench, as the truck bumbled over the backwoods roads for fuck knows how long. She came out of her horror-induced stupor only when a pair of zip-tied wrists poked her damp thigh, and Rook jolted at the touch, raising her hands up to throw a punch but finding them zip-tied as well. The man didn’t seem to notice her distress as he was too busy with his own, dirty-faced and leaning into her space, terror evident in the slight trembling of his hands. 

“If we just confess,” he whispered, staring her down wide-eyed. “If we confess right away, we’ll be okay, right?” 

“No,” snapped another woman sitting across from them, a Peggie slouched next to her. “You’ll make it worse.” 

“Why?” 

The Peggie leaned forward, cradling the barrel of his assault rifle as he squinted towards the man. “Because confession without pain isn’t confession. You’ll scream out your sin, then you’ll wear it on your flesh before John peels it off of you. It’s a beautiful thing.” 

_Before John peels it off of you_ … 

Because he flayed people alive. He’d do the same to her, and everyone else if she let him. 

A sob broke through from between her pressed lips, and when the wild-haired Peggie turned his attention to her, she ducked her face away in shame. 

“I hope this is a sign of early repentance from you, sinner,” he commented, sounding genuinely pleased, almost proud of her in a bizarre way. “Make sure you show it to John.” 

If John saw her now, he would have smirked and mocked her for it, probably. She imagined seeing her like this would have egged him on, maybe encourage him to push her a little harder, just to see what it took to cause her true pain. 

Rook turned away from the smiling Peggie, craning her head awkwardly to try and wipe away her tears with her shoulder in an angry, jerking gesture. That was probably what stopped her from getting a concussion, as something struck the side of the van so hard the four of them flew into the ceiling, Rook’s head slamming hard into the cushion of her upper arm, already bruised from John’s rough handlings. Her shout of alarm joined the cacophony of the other passengers, all interrupted by the jerking of the truck as it rolled, tossing them around like limp dolls. Her elbow collided with the Peggie’s forehead, but the butt of his gun rammed itself into her throat when he rolled on top of her, momentarily knocking out what little air was left in her lungs. One hard jerk had her head snapping back, smacking into the wooden bench, and for a moment everything went black. 

“… _ord, your God, brings you into the land you are entering to possess_ …”

She woke up what had to have been only a few seconds later, every inch of her throbbing with pain. Rook whimpered but forced herself to rise up on her elbows as she noticed movement before her, finding the Peggie halfway to consciousness too. 

“… _and drives out before you many nations... you must destroy them totally_ …”

A deep voice declaimed outside, but it was garbled and likely meant trouble—still, she decided she’d take her chances with the Bible-spitter than an upside down, broken vehicle with the enemy as her passenger. 

Rook scrambled away from the Peggie, shoving the woman’s broken arms off her legs. She made for the doors, slamming her tied hands weakly on the metal to no avail, and when she turned back with the thought of strangling the Peggie back into unconsciousness, she found herself staring down the barrel of his gun. 

Before she could so much as freeze in place, his head exploded and he flopped down like a dropped fish, shattered head bouncing morbidly on the metal. 

“… and show them no mercy,” finished the source of the voice—Jerome, holding a smoking pistol and a Bible… or a false one, as he flicked open the cover and slipped the pistol inside the carved-out pages. 

“Jerome,” was all Rook had the capacity to say, wheezing through a sorely abused throat. 

She held out her hands as Jerome pulled out a hunting knife to cut her free. 

“Stay with me,” he said lowly, pulling her to her feet. “Didn’t go through all this trouble just to lose you now.” 

Someone handed her a gun, and then they were off, doing what Rook apparently did best. If someone asked her now what had happened after the van crashed, Rook wouldn’t be able to tell them. She fought on autopilot in a semi-conscious haze, the waning effects of the Bliss mixing unpleasantly with the shock of the last few hours, with some vague remembrances of mowing down an unholy number of Peggies, dodging under a bridge to avoid mortar rounds and darting across an obscenely long bridge over a deep ravine, some guy with a mullet watching her back (where did Jerome go?). All of a sudden her jeans were wet again, but the wetness was warm and sticky, and there was a stinging pain just above her forehead, and Mullet Guy was holding his hand out to shake hers and yelling over the roar of a helicopter. 

“…thank you enough, Deputy,” he was saying. “I need to walk this one off… I’ll regroup with the Resistance.” 

Rook just blinked as his hand left hers and he wandered away into the darkness of the night. Huffing out a breath, Rook looked around, finding other Resistance members lingering around the helicopter. Where the fuck were they? 

“Need a ride, Dep?” one of them said, but for some reason she swallowed thickly and shook her head, so they shuffled back into the helicopter. 

Rook stumbled back as the steady spin of the chopper’s blades whipped stray hairs around her face, lifting off and disappearing into the black of the sky. Her grip was weak on her gun, and her shock-addled brain saw no reason to keep holding onto it, so she dropped it into the grass and took another look around. They must still be in Holland Valley—this wasn’t the rocky hills of the Mountains or the golden plains of the Henbane. There was a house nearby, one that after a moment of staring Rook realized had once held a prepper stash she had looted weeks ago (and damn near almost killed herself in the process, with a shiny burn scar on her forearm to prove it). 

Something was dripping, and she looked fruitlessly around in the dark trying to find it, until she realized it was blood trickling off the waterproof leather of her gloves as her hands hung limply at her sides. She held her hands up to her face, gaze travelling to find her still-wet flannel absolutely _soaked_ with blood, so much that it had dripped down and stained her jeans with large swaths of crimson. 

What the fuck just happened? 

Rook fumbled for her radio, switching it from the Peggie frequency to the Resistance one so she could ask Jerome (he was there, right? Somewhere?) only to jerk with alarm as Sharky’s already loud voice shouted through the receiver. 

“…fuck you at, Dep, we’re waitin’ for ya!” he was saying, and she blinked at the black plastic. “Hello? I said, heyy- _looo_? Hurky, you sure this thing’s workin’?” 

“You pressin’ the button?” 

“The fuck—‘course I’m pressin’ the fuckin’ button! You’re the senile old man, not me!” 

“Sharky,” Rook interrupted, if only to stop the yelling, except she froze when her own voice sounded hollow and dead. 

Maybe John did kill her after all. 

Sharky chattered his relief happily, completely unaware as the numbness in Rook’s entire body was swept away by cold dread, her shell-shocked mind finally remembering what the hell triggered all of this. 

Her soulmate was a monster. 

Her soulmate tried to kill her. 

He hated her. 

He _hated_ her. 

“…still there, po-po?” Sharky asked with confusion. 

Hands shaking, Rook pressed down on the button and opened her mouth to tell him she was fine, so she could go crawl back into the burned bunker and hide in the ashes. 

“I…” she got out, but it sounded half-wrecked and pathetic, and that was all it took for Rook to crumple into herself, letting out a single sob that she tried and failed to muffle by pressing her lips together. 

“Fuck,” her friend cursed, sounding so horrified it was almost comical. “ _Fuck_ , man, I don’t know what to do when girls cry!” 

“Why’d you make her cry, asshole?” hissed Hurk’s voice from the background. 

“I didn’t make her! She just… Aw hell Dep, what’s the matter? We’ll, uh, we’ll come get ya, just tell us where you’re at.” 

“John Seed is my soulmate, Shark,” Rook croaked into the receiver instead, tears plopping onto the plastic as it shook in her hand. 

There was a pause, and Rook could easily imagine Sharky and Hurk staring wide-eyed and silent at each other. 

“God’s got shitty taste,” quipped Sharky tentatively, and a watery laugh came out before Rook could stop it. “What’d he say?” 

“He doesn’t know. I didn’t say anything to him.” 

“Good, he don’t deserve you,” Sharky declared, and a blush heated Rook’s cold face despite herself. 

“Did he hurt you, Broba Fett?” Hurk asked, sounding much closer now. 

She nodded tearfully, but then remembered they couldn’t see her. “Yeah.” 

“We’ll come get ya,” Sharky repeated firmly. “Where you at?” 

“Um,” Rook sniffed, wiping her nose with her bloody sleeve and checking her surroundings again, trying to re-situate herself in her mental map of the county. Why the fuck was it so hard to think? “Meet me at the Davenport Farm.” 

“We’ll be there faster’n you can burn down a roller rink,” called Sharky, before they signed off. 

A laugh bubbled out of her before she could think to stop it—they were good at that, making her laugh. A warm little ember settled in Rook’s hollow chest already, just imagining letting Sharky and Hurk whisk her off to do some stupid shit that she would’ve probably had to arrest them for only a month or two ago. She lowered the wet radio with another sniff and leaned down with shaky knees to scoop up her gun before setting off for the nearby farm. Even if her soulmate hated her, at least she was gonna have good company tonight. 

Sharky and Hurk were already parked in a (probably stolen) truck, leaning against the driver’s side doors, too engaged in seeing who could spit the farthest to notice Rook approaching until she let out another chuckle at her two idiots. Sharky grinned his toothy grin at her while he and Hurk pulled her into a collective bear hug, and despite the fact that her clothes squished morbidly with blood and they both smelled like sweat and smoke and way too much fucking weed, Rook felt herself warm up a little again. 

“Fuckin’ hell, Dep, did you take a bath in Peggie blood?” Hurk asked, wiping at his crimson-stained front as he drove them over the bumpy dirt road. 

“I guess,” Rook shrugged from the passenger’s seat. “Was still whacked out on Bliss, so I don’t remember much. Jerome got me out, then I was fighting with some guy, I think. And there were mortars? Maybe.” 

“Is that why your shirt’s all burnt?” Sharky said from the backseat, leaning over and tugging at her sleeve. 

Frowning, Rook glanced down to see blackened, melted flannel and a giant hole in the shoulder of her shirt. “Oh, shit.” 

She’d had a jacket at some point, hadn’t she, the one with the fleece? The muscles of her jaw tightened at the realization that John had probably confiscated it during her pseudo-baptism. She’d have to apologize to Dutch for losing yet another article of his clothing (and burning a hole in the other one). 

“We’ll get ya fixed up when we get to Fall’s End,” Sharky assured her. 

“We’re going to Fall’s End?” 

“Yessir. Uhh, ma’am.” Sharky crossed his arms and sat back in his seat looking pleased as punch. “We’re gonna go get some of Casey’s fuckin’ _godly_ steaks and then get absolutely shitfaced.” 

“Mary May’s got a secret stash of whiskey somewhere,” Hurk said knowingly. “Bet she’ll crack it out for you, Dep.” 

“And _then_ ,” Sharky continued, with a frown at his cousin for the interruption. “Then we’re gonna march our drunk asses up that giant fuckin’ hill and burn down John Seed’s fugly-ass sign.” 

That sounded like the surest way to get themselves killed (or at least slightly maimed). It was the greatest idea Rook had ever heard. 

“Sounds like a plan,” she grinned, and her two friends whooped. 

They made it to Fall’s End without much Peggie interference, save for one shirtless, greasy-looking fucker wandering by himself on the roads that Hurk gleefully swerved to smack dead in the road, foot absolutely slamming the gas pedal down with a deafening roar. Watching him fling over their windshield and into the air in a mess of broken bones was a little sickening, but Rook assured herself he might have been one of the angry cunts that chased her down and dragged her to John, and that made it a lot easier to stomach. 

Boomer was still out there, she remembered with a pang. He’d be fine on his own, if they hadn’t managed to catch him—he knew where safety was, if not at Fall’s End then at the Ryes’. 

“Break out the whiskey, Mary May, we got sorrows to drown,” Hurk called as he barged his way through the doors into the dimly lit bar. 

Rook trailed behind him, just in time to see Mary May rolling her eyes as she draped a damp dishcloth over her shoulder and strode towards the register. “I told you already, Drubman, I’m not watchin’ you two suck back my entire stash in half an hour.” 

“Not even for the one and only Deputy?” 

Mary May’s head snapped up so hard her ponytail almost smacked her in the face. “Dep! Jesus Christ, are you all right?” she added with alarm, as she took in Rook’s disheveled, bloodstained form. 

“I guess,” she replied, hunching in on herself a little from the other woman’s scrutiny. 

“Lemme get you some clean clothes,” Mary May said, stumbling a little as she hurried out from behind the bar. 

“And the whiskey,” Hurk added helpfully. 

“And a first aid kit!” Sharky called over his cousin, as the barmaid jogged up the steps. 

“First aid kit?” Rook frowned. 

Sharky tapped his own head above his ballcap with a grimace, and Rook lifted a hand up to her own night-frozen face on instinct, only to be reminded of the sting from before. Her frown deepened and she turned to catch sight of her reflection in the window, finding a hollow, blood-splattered face staring gauntly back, a deep gash just visible through blood-matted hair. Was that from the truck, or the epic gunfight she had next to no memory of, or even from faceplanting into the pavement from the Bliss bullet? 

“Casey, can you make us some grub?” Hurk asked while Sharky was probing Rook for other injuries. 

“Dep eats free, you two pay up,” the gruff cook replied through the kitchen window, as he chopped something out of sight. 

“What? Aw, man!” 

As Hurk rummaged through the pockets of those ridiculous star-spangled sweatpants, Sharky helped Rook peel off her bloody gloves. She cringed at Sharky’s grip on her fingers, tight to combat the wet slip of blood on leather, slightly painful and too reminiscent of John’s crushing hold. She almost buckled at the wave of horror that washed over her like cold river water and icy glares when she realized that the thin barrier had been all that stood between her bare skin and John’s. If he had touched her… he would have known. Would he have stepped back in shock, or would he have taken it as another affront to his holier-than-thou Peggie sensibilities and shoved her back under to rid himself of the burden? 

She’d never go without gloves again. 

Her ruined flannel shirt followed, leaving her in a dirty tank top. She hissed as the mortar burn on her shoulder made itself known, as well as her mangled wrists from too many methods of restraint and a deep bruise on her shoulder blade that had to have come from that fucking Bliss bullet, or maybe from the truck crash (Jesus what even was her life?). Sharky frowned deeply as he looked her over, and Rook’s stomach sank a little again when she spotted the deep, finger-shaped bruises wrapping around her arms. 

John had not been gentle. 

Sharky shook off the melancholy and guided her over to a barstool, where she gratefully collapsed with a grunt. 

“Burns are my specialty,” Sharky chirped, as Mary May handed him the first aid kid with one hand, a bundle of clothes in the other. 

“You don’t say,” Rook quipped, letting him fret around her like a mother hen as he dabbed and swiped at cuts and bruises. 

“Can’t say I’ve ever set anything on fire with a mortar before, though,” he said thoughtfully. 

“Let’s hope you never get the chance,” Mary May said sharply, before turning to Rook. “What the hell happened, Rook? Jerome said he got you outta that prisoner van and then you went off mowin’ down Peggies like you were born doin’ it.” 

Rook stayed quiet for a minute, trying to remember more than just bits of what she’d actually done. Was this what it was like to disassociate? She remembered some of the older soldiers talking about it, seen it happen to buddies of theirs when they saw some real terrible shit. She hadn’t stuck around long enough for the army to ruin her like that, but John Seed had managed to accomplish that in all of five minutes. 

“I guess,” she answered with a noncommittal shrug, accidentally dislodging Sharky’s efforts to dab antibiotic ointment onto her burn. 

Mary May nodded, looking like she realized now was not the time to pry, and Rook deflated a little with relief. Patting the bundle of clothes, she said, “Wanna go shower? I’ll get the whiskey.” 

“Fuck yeah,” Hurk whispered under his breath—or tried, but Hurk never had much sense for volume. 

Rook chuckled at the wry look Mary May sent her friend before replying, “Yeah.” 

She took the bundle of clothes with a warm squeeze on the shoulder from Mary May, and for some reason the comforting gesture just reminded her of why there was a hollow pit in her stomach. Her soulmate has caused this sweet woman hell, took her dad and his truck from her, almost took her home, and here she was leeching off her good will like she was an ally and not the enemy’s handpicked other half. 

Ducking her head to hide her shame from Mary May’s kind, freckled smile, Rook trudged up the stairs, holding the borrowed clothes out to stop them from getting bloodstains. Her hair felt sticky with what was probably a combination of river water, sweat and the blood of fuck knows how many Peggies, and she was dying for some water that wasn’t colder than John’s eyes. 

_Don’t go there_ , Rook warned herself, sinking her teeth into her already battered bottom lip when it made tears burn at her eyes again. 

Dropping Mary Mary’s neatly folded clothes into a haphazard pile on the bathroom floor, Rook shut the door behind her and stripped carefully, hissing when every unusual movement made new cuts or bruised muscles known. Her bra was so soaked through with blood that it made a squelching noise when she took it off, and it’d almost be comical if it weren’t so morbid. Crimson crescents arched underneath her breasts, looking like eclipsed quarter moons were cradling the heavy flesh. 

She stared at herself in the dusty mirror, shaky hands gripping the sink. In the stark, too-white light of the bathroom, her skin looked gaunt and the bruises from John’s fingers looked almost black against the paleness of her. Her grip on the porcelain started to hurt her fingertips, so she instead brought a hand up to her left breast and gently lifted the swell of it to see the wicked man’s words permanently marking her as his. 

_This one’s not clean_.

She choked out a laugh at the irony of the mark, now covered in the blood of enemies she did not remember killing, barely a few inches away from the bruises their speaker marred her with. In a way, they weren’t wrong. The thought made her lower lip tremble. 

“ _Ahh… shhh_.” 

“Fuck,” Rook growled at the memory of John’s mockery of a soothing hush, sniffling and forcefully wiping away any hint of tears. 

_Fuck that cunt_ , she thought, as she stood under the hot spray with her eyes closed, the bathtub swirling merrily with blood-pinkened water. Knowing her soulmate didn’t want her hurt, but she sure as shit didn’t want him either, a psychopath who got off on carving people up like Thanksgiving turkey and dressing them in severed animal parts to leave in the streets like some kind of horror movie villain. She would rather have never solved the mystery of her soul mark to begin with, because now she was stuck knowing how evil her other half was. 

Sharky was right—God had shitty fucking taste. 

A knock at the door made her jump and almost topple over in the tub. 

“Dinner’s ready, po-po,” came Sharky’s cheery voice, tinged slightly with worry. “And Hurky’s already on the second bottle. You better hurry before we get too drunk to climb that mountain.” 

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Rook said without real edge, chuckling as she turned off the water. “Gimme a minute.” 

She dressed quickly, tied down only by the fact that Mary May was a bit more slender than her and she had to wrangle her ass into the other woman’s jeans. When Rook finally descended the stairs, Casey was whisking three plates of fucking _perfect_ -looking steak and potatoes onto the bar, Hurk was not-so-artfully dodging Mary May’s frowns as he poured an already half-empty bottle of Jack down his throat, and Sharky was wiping down her gun with a dish towel. He beamed at her when he spotted her arrival, and her heart clenched a little at how good of a friend she’d managed to find while stumbling through this crazy county. 

“Aw, fuck yes,” she muttered when Mary May slid an entire bottle of bourbon towards her, causing her friends to laugh. “Where’s Jerome? Shouldn’t he be here celebrating too?” 

“He’s still up north, bringing the Vasquez’s home,” Mary May replied, a shadow passing over her face. “Fuck knows they’re gonna need some time to process whatever the hell y’all just went through up there.” 

Rook stayed quiet, stabbing at her potatoes and shoveling them in so she wouldn’t have to reply. Thankfully, the conversation turned away from that night and anything that may or may not relate in some arbitrary way to John Seed, and there was laughter at the bar instead. Sharky encouraged her to get steadily drunker on booze and Hurk’s funny stories about his time abroad (how the fuck did he managed to implant monkeys with explosives?) while Mary May rolled her eyes in disbelief. 

When they were full of alcohol, good food and warmth from a combination of the two, she and her idiot sidekicks happily waved goodbye as they started the trek towards the sign, Rook vaguely aware that this was a stupid idea and not caring in the slightest. Hurk’s lack of volume control was apparently cranked up to eleven when he was wasted, shouting however many country songs he could remember the lyrics of while Sharky casually torched whatever Peggie-related object looked the most flammable, until she snapped at the two of them for either inviting an ambush or starting a wildfire, getting her point across with a little smack to the sides of their heads like a displeased schoolmistress. Sharky looked thoroughly put out at being scolded, but Hurk just wrapped his giant arm around her shoulders and shouted, “C’mon, Broba Fett, sing it with me! _Country roooads, take me hooome_ …!”

They were a lot quieter climbing up that giant fucking hill, realizing very quickly that being drunk (and in their case, totally out of shape, especially compared to Rook) did not make for an easy journey. The fact that it was something like three in the morning and there weren’t any streetlamps this far into the hills made Rook realize just _how_ stupid of an idea this really was. 

“Fuckin’ finally,” wheezed Hurk when the sign loomed over them, casting imposing shadows on them in the moonlight. He was bent over in the grass, one hand on his knee and the other held up. “Gimme a minute, I brought extra rockets for this.” 

“What? I wanted to use this bad boy!” Sharky whined, reaching into his pack and whipping out his flamethrower. 

“What’d I say about starting wildfires?” Rook scowled, frowning when her words sounded slurred even to her own ears. 

“Well what’d ya think is gonna happen when Hurky shoots a missile at it?” Sharky argued, gesturing towards the sign but succeeding instead at smacking his cousin in the face. “Might ‘s well just skip to the end, right?” 

“Tell ya what, Sharky, you take the ‘Y’, I’ll take the ‘S’, and Dep can have the ‘E’.” 

Rook frowned, realizing she’d forgotten to bring most of her gear, before further realizing that she didn’t even have her gear anymore. “I got nothing. You can share the ‘E’.” 

“I’ll let you aim the launcher with me,” Hurk offered helpfully, and Rook shrugged in agreement. 

“Hurky, I think I got a problem,” said Sharky seriously, squinting up at the sign. 

“What?” 

“Well, I’m just thinkin’, if you’re shootin’ a rocket at the ‘S’, and Dep’s shootin’ one at the ‘E’, how’m I gonna get close enough to light up the ‘Y’ with this bitch?” 

Hurk thought for a moment. “Let’s just shoot three rockets, and then set the remains on fire.” 

“Are we gonna die from this?” Rook asked tiredly, when Sharky settled his flamethrower in the grass, looking pleased. 

“Here’s hopin’!” said Sharky, taking off his ballcap and saluting her with it. 

They did in fact take turns on the RAT4 (“I gotta get me one of these!” Rook shouted when the rocket she shot absolutely incinerated the ‘E’, and probably blew out her eardrum in the process) and Sharky was gleeful to point out the smoldering remains of the wannabe Hollywood panels in the grass. Hurk whooped as one of the panels flew off the metal support beams and skidded down the hill like a sled, looking for a brief moment like he was prepared to chase it down and try to ride it, up until Rook hastily grabbed his arm. 

Their glee and catharsis from the chaos they’d wrought was broken by the sounds of Rook’s radio crackling to life. 

“Well, _Deputy_ , it appears I haven’t cleansed you of your sins well enough,” hissed John Seed’s voice through the walkie, and her heart skipped a little at the hoarseness in his voice, like he’d shouted for hours after her escape. “I’ll have to rectify that mistake, next time we meet. And mark my words, Deputy… we _will_ meet again. When this little uprising is over, you’ll rebuild that sign piece by piece. You’ll work until your fingers are worn to the bone. And when you’re done… I’ll bury you beneath it.” 

Rook fumbled quickly to switch the radio to another frequency, cutting her soulmate’s eerie little chuckle at the promise of her suffering to come. She swallowed hard and looked up at her friends, who looked almost as shaken as she was, the weight of the RAT4 hanging limp at Hurk’s side while Sharky stared hollowly at her. 

“What’re you gonna do, Dep?” he asked her, and her jaw set in determination. 

“I’m getting the fuck outta this region,” Rook said lowly, grip tightening on the radio, “and I’m not comin’ back until there’s nothing left to do anywhere else.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Ugh that scene at the river was the first thing that really got me about Johnny boi, with that face n those eyes :( Someone give him a hug. (PS. Sharky and Hurk are total BFFs and you cannot change my mind about that :p Their help might involve too much alcohol and fire, but it's the thought that counts)
> 
> Recognizable dialogue belongs to Ubisoft. Jerome's choppy Bible quote is Deuteronomy 7:1-2. The roller rink joke is actually canon; Sharky's first fire was after a failed date at a roller rink when he set a trash can on fire and it spread (so sayeth the almighty digital holy book of the Far Cry wiki, anyhow). 
> 
> Special thanks to Jonkers, lisachu, ShadowIsEm and Emily.


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